


holy manna | מן קדוש

by jonphaedrus



Series: doe eyes and lies [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, Gratuitous Headcanons About The Astral Realm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: Noctis Lucis Caelum opened his eyes.





	holy manna | מן קדוש

**Author's Note:**

> _death is coming, hell is moving,_   
>  _can you bear to let them go?_   
>  _will you help the trembling mourners,_   
>  _who are struggling hard with sin,_   
>  _tell them all about the saviour,_   
>  _tell them that He will be found;_   
>  _brethren, join your cries to help them;_   
>  _sisters, let your prayers abound;_   
>  _pray, oh pray, that holy manna_   
>  _may be scattered all around._
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> ( [59](https://fasola.org/indexes/1991/?p=59) ; [holy manna](https://youtu.be/lhqKWzTHBI4) )
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> [_manna_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna) is a substance that was given to the israelites during their forty years in the desert traveling from the land of goshen in egypt back to canaan (israel) in the book of exodus of the old testament. it was given to the hebrew people as proof of god's covenant, that they would not be abandoned as they suffered in the desert, and in modern parlance "manna" can be something that refers to an unexpected benefit, a spiritually nourishing gift, or a relief from the suffering of daily life and a grant toward the boons of heaven, release, and rest.

The overhead sun on the back of his eyelids was so bright that it made his head smart and throb, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet. Noctis just lay where he’d fallen, splayed, aching, his back sore and burning, the centre of his chest a present ache, his right arm and the right side of his face terrifically tender like hairline-shattered glass.

At first, he thought the rushing he was hearing was either the sound of his blood pumping too-loud in his ears with residual adrenaline, or the sound of waves slamming the shore back and forth like a heartbeat, like the rush on the rocks at Cape Caem. But, as he slowly started to find himself again, he realised that it was _shouting_. Shouts of joy, fury, of tearful reunions, of anguish and solace and absolute, unfettered redemption. There was laughter, crying. He could hear Sol and Old, Middle, New Lucian spoken all around him in a mess of jumbled languages, shrieking, yelling, cheering, clapping, all the words lost to the cluster and the chaos and the tide of humanity and voices. There was a wave of _joy,_ as bright as the sun dappling his face, that just seemed so out of place with the feelings he’d had now for the last eleven years. Regret and sorrow and grief—seemed to just wash off of the slate.

Noctis Lucis Caelum opened his eyes.

 

 

In the square outside the Citadel of Insomnia, all around him, as crowded as a festival day, a frantic series of jumbled, incoherent, overwhelming reunions were taking place. Noctis stared at the cloudless blue sky, far above him, as he heard the sound of a hundred and thirteen Kings and Queens of Lucis—reunited, at long last, after two thousand years locked in the Ring, with their loved ones.

Not Noctis. Noctis lay there, still and spread-eagle, feeling strangely disconnected, oddly not-himself, motionless and still and as-yet hollow.

He was dead.

He was dead, and so were all these people, and so was Ardyn, and so likely were Prompto, Ignis, and Gladio. He was dead, they were _all_ dead, and they had left behind a world he wasn’t even sure he’d saved, and—

“Clarus!” His father’s voice was what jarred Noctis at last, and he sat up with a wince of pain, his bare elbows in his old black t-shirt scraping on the tarmac as he looked around, squinting, trying to see clearly despite the glare off of the black marble. “Clarus, I found him!” And then—

Regis Lucis Caelum practically fell to his knees beside Noctis, his hands held back and shaking. His father looked—ten, fifteen years younger than he had when he had died, his green eyes brilliant and water-clear in the sun, bright with laughter, his hair still dark and only just beginning to tinge through in streaks of grey and white, and he at last grabbed Noctis by the shoulders, dragged him over, and hugged him so tight Noct couldn’t breathe, chin digging into the sharp angles and slopes of his father’s shoulder. “Dad,” he tried to wheeze, fingers scrabbling at Regis’ elbows, shoulders. “Dad, I can’t breathe—“ Regis’ fingers dug into the underside of his shoulderblades, his sharp chin into the top of Noct’s head, his arms and hands shaking, his breath wet and caught in his chest.

His father was crying.

“I’m—“ Regis said, his deep voice cracking, “Noctis, you—I’m _so proud of you_.” And he was laughing, laughing as he cried, and Noctis grabbed him back around the chest, laughed and cried as well, face buried in the safety of his father’s chest, especially when he looked up and found—

His Papa, Clarus, younger, before he’d had to start shaving his hair, still grown in brown and plaited back out of his face, and with him—

Gladio. Gladio, grinning,one arm slung around his father (shorter than him, Clarus was shorter than Gladio now, they were almost the same age now) and Ignis, his eyes still scarred, smiling down at Noctis, a hand on Gladio’s shoulder to make sure he wasn’t lost in the crush. Prompto, grinning, as he jerked his camera up to snap a photo, cackling with laughter and pure glee at the simple joy of it. “That’s the Noctis I know!” He laughed, waggling the camera. “Way happier, even if you do kinda look like a hobo in that shirt!”

“Hey!” Noct laughed, as he hung on around Regis’ neck, face pressed into his dad’s shoulder, loathe to let go of him now, after everything. “And you _didn’t_ look like a hobo with that beard?” He looked up as a figure in white barrelled its way between Gladio and Ignis, and Noctis yelped in surprise when Luna practically tripped over her own feet, staring down at him, her brother just visible behind her, flushed and embarrassed about the reunions.

She was still twenty-four, just like he remembered her, the sun casting gold and alabaster threads through her fresh-wheat hair. They stared at one another, both of them motionless, unsure.

Finally, she gasped, smiling, and pressed both her hands over her mouth, covering her grin and pressing back the unspilled tears in her eyes, before with a shriek of delight that he echoed back just as loudly she tackled him head-on, knocking him out of his father’s embrace and flat onto his back on the pavement again, her full weight pinning him back down. “Noctis!” The Oracle laughed, her face buried in his shoulder, wet and overwheled. “Oh, you did it! You did it, you did it! I knew you could, I knew it, I knew!” He held her so tight, so _damn_ tight, after everything. They’d earned it. They’d earned _this_. Luna was shaking with tears, just like he was, and he wanted to just hold her _forever._

“I missed you,” Noctis said, his voice shaking, hiccoughing, “Luna I missed you, I missed you _s_ _o_ much.” His best friend, his other half, he had missed her. He had missed her _so much_. Like a limb that was gone, his heart buried with her in the Altissian waves like something dead. “I’m so sorry Luna, I’m sorry—“

“Oh, it doesn’t matter!” Luna was laughing when she pulled back, tears overflowing her eyes, and leaving bright crystal paths down her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter at all! It’s all over now, and we’re here. Who _cares_ Noct, you did it!”

His breath stuttered in his chest.

He rather had, hadn’t he?

As Regis and Luna pulled him to his feet, as Clarus picked him up and spun him up into the air in a circle like he was still a child, laughing merrily all the while, as Gladio and Ignis and Prompto crushed him into a hug, as Ravus (with both human arms again, all of perhaps fourteen, as young as he’d been when his mother had died) came over and very seriously took his hand and thanked him, stuttering, from the bottom of his heart, as Noctis watched families at-long-last reunited, as he saw lovers throw themselves into one another’s arms, as he saw parents and children, friends crying into each other’s shoulders, all the Kings of Eld _happy_ again, rather than great beasts, corpses crafted through magic and might into monsters, as he saw Insomnia filled with laughter and sunshine and beauty again—that made it all worth it. His grief was but a drop in an ocean of joy, and he could not begrudge that euphoria.

He’d done it.

 

 

Everyone kept stopping him. People he’d never met, people he had no idea who they were. A King so old that he’d tried to speak to Noctis in thickly-accented Old Lucian, his skin dusky brown and his grey eyes wet with tears, his long hair a rangy salt-and-pepper, holding hands tight with his Amicitia, had taken Noct’s hand and haltingly, in simple words that Noctis remembered from his childhood lessons, through his tears and through his cheek-breaking grin, _thanked_ him. A Queen, twins in her arms, had kissed him on both cheeks, crowing with delight. Scads of children came sprinting by, shrieking in celebration. Another King, whom Noctis recognised from his shield still held in the Armiger, picked Noctis up and gave him a hug so tight that he wheezed in surprised pain, his ribs constricting like a bellows under the power of his arms. A King twenty years his younger and a thousand years before him smiled so widely that he revealed missing front teeth. Princes, Lords, parents and children, Oracles and Kings, swarmed around him and were swallowed up by the tide of humanity, accepting him back into their arms.

“There’s someone you must meet,” Luna was saying, stumbling over her words as she and Noctis held hands unbreakably tight, dragging him away from the crowds, his hangers-on finally starting to drop away. They kept being stopped, being delayed, being waylaid. “I don’t know where he is, but—“

Luna came to a grinding halt at the foot of the Citadel stairs, and before them stood two men, on the steps up into the building, the walls and doors towering untouched and glowing in the sunlight above them. They were holding one another tight, faces buried in each other’s shoulders.

One had long, dark-brown hair shot with grey, in thick corkscrew curls. He wore a black military uniform, ancient and in the style of the picturebook Old Lucians that Noct had seen illustrated as a child, all leather and gold over a black cotton tunic, laced-up thong boots, a gladius sheathed at his hip, his broad forearms wiry with old muscle, marred with pale scars and dark hair. When he pulled away from his companion, Noctis saw he had blue eyes that rivalled the sky in their brightness—and to go with it, a _monstrous_ black eye half-formed, two broken lips, and what looked like a broken jaw and nose. His face was absolutely covered in blood, squinting out his injured eye, but he was grinning.

And then his companion turned toward them, and Noctis felt all the breath go out of him.

His hair was longer than it had been when Noctis had known him, as long as his brother’s, thick and in lustrous, glowing ringlets, cut down past his shoulderblades, with a golden laurel wreath braided in, hanging lopsided and affectionate over one temple, just above his brow. His nose was no longer slightly crooked, and the strange, unhealthy grey pallor that had coloured his high cheekbones was a healthy, full red again, revealing the scads of freckles that covered his nose and cheeks and forehead and chin. He looked _younger_ too, nearer to Noctis’ age rather than his father’s age, more weight on his narrow, rickety frame, a slight double chin, the flesh of his upper arms soft and supple.

He wore a tunic of a purple so dark and rich that it was almost black and toga and sandals, edged in pure Lucian black and gold threads braided into the wool, draped in long cascading folds down to puddle around his feet, trailing down to the marble where it was looped over one elbow. He looked more at home in that than he ever had in his later life, in too many scarves and a fedora and a coat. He looked, for the first time that Noct had ever seen him, _regal_.

He looked like who he was.

Ardyn Lucis Caelum turned to face him, and smiled, soft and broad and sincere. The chaos around them seemed to hush, and Noctis walked forward to meet him halfway up the stairs, Luna holding tight to his hand. “Your Majesty,” Ardyn said, his toga lifted delicately with one hand to keep it from tangling around his knees and ankles as he walked down the stairs to meet Noctis, a little hesitant yet. “You look quite well. I do hope I didn’t make _too_ much of a mess of you. I did try to go easy on you.” His eyes were red; like he had been crying. “You have my sincerest apologies.” As he said it, he reached out and took Noct’s free hand tight in one of his, a reassuring touch, his palms warm rather than chill as death. Under his skin, Noctis could see that the blood ran visibly red and blue in his veins—not black. Free, at last.

“Don’t mention it,” Noctis settled on at last, his throat thick, as he started to laugh. “I think if anybody is owed an apology, it’s you from all of us!”

Ardyn’s smile grew, and he came the rest of the way down the stairs to take Noct’s shoulders, to hold him appraisingly at arm’s length, watching him with his sharp amber eyes, and then finally leaned forward and hugged him, bone-crushingly tight. Ardyn sighed into his ear, and Noctis held onto the heavy woollen folds of his toga, face pressed into his shoulder. He didn’t smell like dust and decay and death any more; he smelled _strongly_ of chocobo and the ocean and a little bit like, strangely, anachronistically, if Noctis had to put a name to it, _motorcycle oil_ , and it was odd, how _happy_ he was, to see the man here. Where he was meant to be—as _who_ he was meant to be.

“You,” Ardyn murmured into his hair, his smile so broad Noctis could _feel_ it, “absolutely brilliant boy. You genius. You darling, you gift. You perfect child, you. Oh, Noctis, _Noct—_ ” He pulled back, kissed Noct’s forehead.

He was crying.

“You did us all proud.”


End file.
